Author Archive

The latest update has escaped the confines of its disgusting blood soaked space station!

Alpha version 0.13 features a low-gravity map, bloody footprints, incinerator fixes and more!

Have at it, cleaning crew! Viscera

Note that this is a full install, no previous versions are required. Best you uninstall any old version first.

Changelog:
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Maps:
-Added new map: Zero-G Therapy
-Fixed objects not being incinerated in some maps.
-Fixed objects falling behind stairs in “Section 8″.

Game:
-Fixed dispensors repeatedly throwing out gibs in quick succession.
-Fixed held objects dying from continued collisions.
-Fixed janitors dying suddenly from encroaching objects.
-Fixed non-mess objects(Crates, Barrels, etc) being counted as mess.
-Fixed chinese take-out box collision size.
-Added Blood-Cluster objects for Low-Gravity environments.
-Fixed Lanterns not being lit properly.
-Added bloody player footprints.

UI:
-Removed Password box from “Direct Connect” dialog.
-Listed keys in options menu. (cannot be changed yet)
-Added View-Bob setting to options menu.
-Added FoV setting to options menu.

Get to work!

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Greetings mortals!

So we’ve been taking the last week easy. Our brother is still recovering, so that will obviously delay work
We’ve been spending some time solidifying the vision for the full VCD however, so we want to let you guys know where we want VCD to go. Here we go then
———-

Central to the full game will be a selection of unique maps, each with their own premise/style/focus. Some example of these would be:
-Medical Bay
-Gravity Chamber
-Infested Facility
Each of these areas would feature slightly different gameplay and approaches. The game is still about cleaning up each place, but each place brings with it a unique focus and differing challenges/mechanics.

Beyond that, we will be adding more mechanics and polishing up existing functions. Here is a brief list of some planned features:
—–
-A tool for picking up several cartridges at once.
-Blood will take a little more than one “jab” to get rid of (could depend on size of splat).
-Better interaction between hands and objects.
-Fire mechanics (fires can be put out and can be started accidentally).
-Alien infestation and tools to deal with it
–Saw
–Flamethrower
-A radio.
-Dead bodies.
-Bullet holes and a tool to fix them.
-Broken equipment and ways of repairing it.
-Cataloging name-tags of deceased (more details on this down the line)
-The possible addition of a cart. A wonky cart.

And we have a bunch of other ideas still, but we want to keep a few surprises
Also, there will be considerably more fixes and polish applied to current aspects, such as physics syncing and “clocking-out”.

Thanks everyone, I hope this sheds some light on things
May you ever clean the bloody halls!

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Behold, mortal squires! The Source-Code for Rooks Keep v1.01 has finally been released from purgatory!

It contains all the class files to use as a reference for making your own mods and maps, also included are several basic text files explaining how to add the various elements to the game.

Download on IndieDB

Note: The files included are to be used for reference ONLY, do not reproduce them, attempt to compile them, or in any way violate their copyrights, doing so will result in a brief and painful stay in the king’s arena, solely for the kingdom’s amusement.

Have at it, rogues!

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Behold! The evil creation we put together in 10 days!

Viscera Cleanup Detail: The space-station janitor simulator!

“Disaster! An alien invasion and subsequent infestation have decimated this facility. Many lives were lost, the facility was ruined and the aliens were unstoppable. All hope was lost until one survivor found the courage to fight back and put the aliens in their place!
It was a long and horrific battle as the survivor dueled with all manner of horrific life-forms and alien mutations, but our hero won out in the end and destroyed the alien menace! Humanity was saved!

Unfortunately, the alien infestation and the heroic efforts of the courageous survivors have left rather a mess throughout the facility. As the janitor, it is your duty to get this place cleaned up.
So grab your mop and roll up your sleeves, this is gonna be one messy job.
Today, you’re on Viscera Cleanup Detail! ”

Grab the free alpha build now!: Download on IndieDB

And vote for it on Greenlight!: Viscera Greenlight

You can keep track of its progress here:
Official Page
Twitter: @ViceraCleanup

Feast your eyes upon the official trailer!

Stay tuned for coming weekly updates(hopefully).

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I thought I’d showcase some of the stuff I used to work on.

 

Age of Mythology is the first game that really got me hooked on programming, I enjoyed making random maps in a text editor, the code was simple but still formatted much like any other programming language, but it allowed me to quickly see results from my work..

 

Here are some of the maps I made, though there are several others.

 

This map was entitled “Gold Rush”, for those who have played Age of Empires II, they may remember the popular map where you would fight over the gold in the middle, with this map I tried to recreate the classic gameplay of it. Players were also given a free monument from the start.

 

Next came “Black Forest”, another recreation of a classic Age of Empires II map, except I added a feature to the map that allowed it to pick a random style each time you generated the map, it would make one of several black forest variations, including Classic, Desert, Snow, Erebus, and several others.

 

Here is another nice one, The “Carribean”, a chain of white sanded islands with ghost ships, undead pirates, and sea snakes who attack you if you go near the rocky islands. Each player would have their own small island, but everyone wants the large center island filled with riches!.

 

This one was appropriately called “Ring Lords”, it is indeed a pun on Lord Of the Rings. At any rate, players were all on the same large ring which surrounded the small island in the middle, protected by a small stretch of water that separated it from the mainland. This map was very good, and players would fight over the riches in the middle, often defending it well. I still remember the time I had to defeat an enemy that took the entire mainland, while I was left with my base on the island.

 

Another good map, “Dunes” was a large open desert with sweeping hills, scarce wood, and deadly mummies that protected all the gold. Gifted with free farms and two lighthouses, players had large spaces to work with between the cliffs dotted around the map.

 

I added several nice features to my maps, making each one unique. All of the maps also featured real-time lighting, where the lighting would change as the time rolled on, surprisingly this wasn’t used in most other maps.

 

For some of my maps I had to change the AI to recognize that my maps had water in them, otherwise the AI would never attack, this work especially well in the Carribean, where they would assault you on a regular basis.

 

Well, this concludes the showcasing of my Age of Mythology maps, if anybody wants them they can feel free to ask.

 

More Trash from the Past still to come..

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Here are some boring facts about the User Interfaces(UI’s) that have been made for our projects, It’s long, but worth a read!..

 

We’ll start with the UI that was made for The Crucible’s TC version for UT3, during the time of the MSUC, although I made others before that.

 

The whole UI was redesigned and remade about 3 times before finally looking like that. Every window that the game needed was made several times, and because of some limitations in the UT3 UI editor, scenes had to be remade even more times when they were renamed.

 

Next came the UI for The Crucible’s UDK version, although this version was never released, I did make an entirely new UI for it, with a grey and red color scheme, it was styled similar to the above image, but was once again quite different. Here you can see the options menu, these generally made use of my complex and easy to use auto settings generation panel, made my work much easier when it was finished.

This UI also featured a handy tool tip which would appear when you hovered over things, simple function, but actually quite difficult to make..

 

Then as we started developing stuff using the UDK, we discovered that future UDK updates would no longer feature the UT3 UI editor, and would instead be using Adobe Flash alone. At this point it became obvious that I had to learn that if we wanted to have any kind of a UI in our games…

 

So I spent months learning Flash, and I was able to make some nice stuff with it, but it was a lot harder to work with, especially the communication between the game and your UI, seeing as how the system is separate.

 

I began creating the UI for Rook’s Keep using flash, but halfway through I was struck by an idea, and desperate to not use flash I decided to pursue it.

 

I began creating a 3D UI, one that could render meshes, particles, materials, and just about everything you would find in the actual game. Needless to say, this was no easy task, and there are reasons why nobody else has ever tried to make such a thing, but I aimed to be the first.

 

I succeeded, up to a point, It could render all the things I wanted it to, I had overcome all of the expected problems in some way or another, and it was going very well…

 

It was my hope that Rook’s Keep would be a Pilot for my nice UI, and that it would give Rook’s Keep something unique in the gaming world, something that would set it apart, but this was not to be…

 

Once it came time to actually design a UI for Rook’s Keep, my UI was still difficult to work with, because its so complicated to get it to work, its complicated to make things with it. It would also require much more content than originally planned for Rook’s Keep, and even then, its a bit of a gamble..

 

So instead Rook’s Keep will be using a simple 2D UI system that DarkCarnivore was experimenting with at the time, and my UI is now somewhat abandoned by me..

 

However I did plan for my UI to ultimately be licensed out to the UDK community, so long as they credit us for its use. But before it can do that, I have to make and in-game editor for it, and it needs a good cleanup, as well as some additional features.

 

So maybe one day I’ll finish it, and we’ll have a decent UI that we can work with on the UDK…

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